Keith Olbermann, the well-known sports reporter-turned-political-activist, obviously believes we’re all living in a dystopia.

Olbermann has a show called TheResistance, which he makes for (sigh) GQ. He often releases clips of The Resistance on Twitter. On September 5th, he released a clip that was filled with a series of apocalyptic-sounding proclamations and demands related to Trump’s decision to do away with DACA.

In the clip, Olbermann uses melodramatic and condemnatory phrases and dons crazed expressions, all of which make him look and sound a lot like Adam Sutler, the dystopian dictator from V for Vendetta. That’s pretty funny, considering that Olbermann obviously believes he sounds and acts much more like the movie’s hero, V.

Here is the clip of Olbermann:

NEW VIDEO: After DACA, not only is Trump a racist coward, but anyone who supports him and ISN'T a racist, is worse pic.twitter.com/AEZ5ik9XdW

Now, I’m not trying to call attention to Olbermann’s admonishment of Trump’s decision to end DACA in and of itself. What I am calling attention to is Olbermann’s over-the-top, incendiary, fallacy-prone, yet entertaining rhetorical style. Olbermann is a walking example of what not to say and do when you’re trying to get political opponents to take you seriously.

Before I look more closely at Olbermann’s rhetoric in this video, I should let all of you who don’t follow Olbermann know that he’s been riding the “say it the worst, scariest way you can” train for a long time. He began prophesying a Trump-caused apocalypse since just after the election and has been windmilling his arms in anger and panic ever since.

For example, here is a video of Olbermann publicly asking other governments’ intelligence agencies to leak against Trump because Trump’s “coup” took power out of the hands of Americans:

Olbermann frequently and uproariously attacks the POTUS on Twitter:

Image Credit: The BlazeImage Credit: The Huffington Post

Here Olbermann curses at Betsy DeVos on Twitter after she expressed concern for hurricane victims:

Olbermann apologized for the DeVos tweet, but then used his apology to plug his upcoming book, which, unsurprisingly, bashes the POTUS with flourishes of profanity:

To be clear, Olbermann hates Trump worse than just about anything. If Olbermann was forced to make a fan club either for Trump or a civilization-destroying, Earth-bound asteroid, we’d probably find him waving a “Woo Asteroid!” sign.

Of course, Olbermann’s recent clip- in which he discusses the president’s decision to get rid of DACA- vibrantly displays his Trump hate. He calls Trump an “active, belligerent, virulent white nationalist dedicated to rolling back the rights of and ruining the lives of Americans of color.” He even manages to praise himself while spewing Trump hate: “Who could have believed that a creature whose campaign began two years ago with a vile, psychotic assault on Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent actually meant it? Well, millions of us did.”

He shows a little hate for Jeff Sessions, who he calls an “evil Keebler Elf.”

He shows some hate for Republican politicians. Apparently, they “rode Trump’s evil coattails to victory and then figured the stain of his hatred would somehow wash off” and “will be damned in history for what they were, enablers of the worst American president of all time and the worst elected leader in the history of all the western democracies…”

Then, Olbermann displays a fair bit of hatred for Trump supporters:

“And now it is up to those voters and those republicans to atone for their sins that will damn them to hell, political or otherwise. They must defend 800,000 Americans who came here, or in most cases were brought here as children, nearly half of them before their sixth birthday, about whom the Bible these republicans endlessly thump without seemingly ever opening, tells us in Ezekiel, “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.”

Also:

“With DACA, the awful truth is fully and finally upon us. There are two kinds of Trump supporters today. There are the racists who hate Mexicans and all hispanics and blacks and women, who think the playing field has somehow been tilted against white men for half a century and who have sold this hateful bill of goods to those in this society who have failed and are looking for anybody to blame. And then there are those other Trump supporters who do not have these vile hatreds in their blackened souls, but who are still willing to exploit and embrace those who do, and they are worse than the racists, because, to them, this is an opportunity for power, and on the existential subject of right and wrong, they don’t care.”

There is no room for nuance in this description of Trump supporters. Olbermann’s understanding of the meaning of the term “Trump supporter”—and the overly simplistic assumptions he attaches to the term—presupposes the impossibility of Republicans supporting Trump while still being critical and disapproving of how he handles certain problematic situations, like Charlottesville. Olbermann essentially flattens, or stereotypes, anyone who likes Trump, or (some of) what Trump has done in office. In one fell swoop, Olbermann angrily characterizes all Trump supporters as complicit, racist demons who salute the devil in the Oval Office. Olbermann breathes hate, but he accuses everyone he opposes of breathing hate.

2 Comments

Then again, as I recently saw in a post by someone smarter than me ” Freedom of speech in this country makes it easier for those of us with at east average intelligence to recognize the morons among us… or those with an agenda”… n this case, i think Keith fits both..

This man is not unhinged, although at first listen he appears to be. He’s playing to his audience. Too bad he’s such a crappy actor. The scary part is that there are people out there who lap this stuff up.